CaptainShiznit

14 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I made one from an old camp mat, lined with flock. It's lasted years and been ace.

As for flocking the tube, a square opposite teh focus tube gives much of the benefit for little effort.

Really? Is that where the majority of the internal reflection problems lie then? Very useful info!

6 hours ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

Hi,

I don't have one of these myself (I bought the film and made a cardboard filter), but I have purchased an Astrozap dew shield which was listed for the 127mm Mak. Unfortunately it was around 1-2 cm too short, so I would advise you go for the 155-165 mm size which is recommended for a 130mm Newt. I think its the ring which holds the cross vanes in place which makes the Newt's diameter a lot larger than its actual mirror size.

Hope this helps

John

Just as a side note, did you find a dew shield to fit the 130 PDS? I was after something to reduce internal reflections from a street light without flocking and asked FLO about the Astrozap ones who replied that none were suitable.

6 hours ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

Hi,

I don't have one of these myself (I bought the film and made a cardboard filter), but I have purchased an Astrozap dew shield which was listed for the 127mm Mak. Unfortunately it was around 1-2 cm too short, so I would advise you go for the 155-165 mm size which is recommended for a 130mm Newt. I think its the ring which holds the cross vanes in place which makes the Newt's diameter a lot larger than its actual mirror size.

Hope this helps

John

Ah great advice thanks. I didn't even notice or maybe didn't look far enough down the list to see the newts in brackets.

Thanks again!

Here's my quick and dirty PA routine using SharpCap.

When placing tripod, try to aim the North leg at Polaris.

Run SharpCap and connect camera, set exposure to 2s then run polar alignment routine.

Let the first stage plate solve, hit next, release clutch and rotate RA 90° as instructed.

My Az is usually over a degree off so I tend to nudge one of the rear legs a few inches, otherwise I'll run out of Az adjustment. I do this till the Az is within 20 or 30 arc minutes.

I then adjust whichever has greater error between Alt and Az to within 30 arc seconds, then the other.

Then fine adjustments until both are managing to stay until 10 arc seconds error.

I've got this down to a few minutes at most now. I came straight from manual polar alignment and just can't believe I wasted all that time previously 😊

As a note, I used to use a second hand QHY5 mono and an unbranded 9x50 guide scope and found it difficult to plate solve with within SharpCap, which made the process frustrating. I upgraded to a ZWO 120mm and Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED and the improvement was massive.

Hope this helps you a bit.

Try inputting the ra and dec into APT. Coordinates can be found here: https://theskylive.com/c2019y4-info

Just seen some of the solar images here and as it's something I'd like to try myself with my 130PDS, could anyone advise as to the best ready made filter? I'm looking at the Astrozap Baader one here https://www.firstlightoptics.com/solar-filters/astrozap-baader-solar-filter.html

Would the 136-146mm be the most suitable?

Cheers all

20 minutes ago, Atreta said:

Hi, what exposure length are you using? 

Hey. It's a Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED, 242mm

Edit: misread the question. 2 second exposures.

Hey,

For the last couple of nights while polar aligning with SharpCap, Polaris is dancing about when I get close to alignment. I'm then seeing quite bad guiding in PHD until I try polar alignment again. On the second try, Polaris is still dancing about as shown but I guess with a bit of luck I'm getting closer to the money and my guiding looks better with under 1.00" total error.

I've played with the settings in SharpCap as far as the black threshold and minimum star pixel but it doesn't seem to change the dancing Polaris, only making it a bit harder to solve.

Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS

120x60s @ISO800 / 10 dark, 30 flat, 50 bias

Individual frames calibrated in DSS. Processed and animated in Photoshop

Thanks for the excellent advice on this one. I was able to extract the calibrated frames from DSS with the above setting (plus the debayering option). I then loaded one into Photoshop and recorded a new action of stretching it and dealing with noise. Then using File > Automate > batch, point Photoshop at the right folder and away it went. Took about 30 seconds per frame so about an hour of automation. I then created the following gif.

Just found this setting in DSS which should help

@Craney that's incredibly helpful, thanks. I'm gonna give this a crack tomorrow.

Regarding DSS creating a calibrated frame prior to stacking, would this be in the registering phase? I'll have to have a check to see if I can pull calibrated frames out of it before stacking.

Thanks again

21 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Don't use DSS but would have thought you can just calibrate the images and save them without stacking, I do it in Maxim then fiddle about with them on PS, I assume they're colour images ?

As you say it's a bit time consuming which is why I still have a couple waiting to be processed, there may be ways to batch process them but if they're taken over a period there will be differences in background levels etc so may still need tweaking individually depending how fussy you are, I generally aren't that fussy and run the first attempt through animation to see any really bad frames then work on those.

Dave

Cheers Dave. I'll have a fiddle and might try Maxim.

14 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Calibrate and process all the individual frames, I then reduce them in resolution and size as no point having tiff sized images for animation IMHO others disagree 😂

I then use imppg to align and crop them all as it does the best job. P'Shop is pretty useless at this bit but the P'Shop animation does a good job of producing a finished GIF from the aligned images.

Dave

Cheers Dave,

Sounds like a lengthy process? Would I have to use DSS to apply my calibrations to each sub individually? Is there a way for DSS to do this automatically rather than me doing it 120 times? How about histogram stretching/colour balancing? Is there a way to batch process or again is it a case of stretching 120 images? I'm still extremely novice at processing DSOs so don't have much experience beyond following a standard workflow.

Thanks again

Hey,

I captured 120x60s subs of comet 2019/Y4 Atlas last night. I wanted to make an animation of its movements across the star field. I have no idea how to process it. My usual process for DSOs is DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop, and lunar images with PIPP and AutoStakkert. I have no idea how to proceed with calibration files, colour balancing etc (I use a light pollution filter so everything is green). What's the simplest method to process the 120 frames and create a gif or avi?

Cheers

I have a 130PDS/Canon 600D on my HEQ5 Pro. When I asked similar questions I was warned the 200 might be a bit of a sail in the wind and they were probably right. Even the 130 suffers with a bit of wind. I don't regret choosing the 130 over the 200 personally.

Hope that helps somewhat.

Cheers guys, I'll give it a bit more time.

6 hours ago, Danield06 said:

Looks good! Maybe you could use some dithering? 

I have APT/PHD set to automatically dither but I haven't looked at the settings. APT announces "dithering started, dithering finished" with very little time in between, between exposures. Do I need to look at the settings and increase the dither? If so, would that be in PHD or APT?

Cheers!

Probably the happiest I've been with a final image so far. I know it's not perfect but I'm still very happy with it. Would still be more than happy to receive criticism to improve!

54x180s guided @ISO800

10 dark / 30 flat / 50 bias

Stacked in DSS, processed in Photoshop

Gear in signature

Hey,

I was considering getting my 600D astro modded. I had my eye on cheap astrophotography for a while but I've sent two messages via the web form and had no replies. Anyone know if he's still working, or a member of the forum? Alternatively any other recommendations?

Cheers

The idea behind the clocks is accuracy I believe. If Polaris is supposed to be at 03:17, it needs to be at 03:17 when you polar align, not 03:16 or 03:18. If you use the clocks right you should get it pretty accurate but if you guess then (if you're imaging) you'll get trails. If you're not imaging then by eye will be close enough.

I really didn't like manual polar alignment when I was getting started. I got a good guide scope and camera, and SharpCap Pro (£10) and use the polar alignment feature on that. It's a revelation and takes a couple of minutes now.

Hey.

Just a quick one. I'm considering setting up tonight and shooting the same target as I did a couple nights ago while I'm asleep. I'm up early for work in the morning so plan to tear down before I leave. Would you advise to capture a new set of darks, flats and biases or do you think I can make do with what I got from a few nights ago with the temperature being about the same?

Shooting with a DSLR.

Cheers!

33 minutes ago, Spaced Out said:

Thanks for the replies, this is helpful.

I use APT at the moment for focusing. Would you say the EAF steps are repeatable ? I mean can I store focus points in APT and return to them later on and fairly accurately ?

Thanks

Yeah that's pretty simple to do. I'm pretty sure the step number comes from ASCOM so it should be accurate. The EAF itself also seems to do a good job of keeping the focus tube from moving between sessions.

1 hour ago, Spaced Out said:

 

Thanks both for replying.

Would you say it is up to carrying a mono camera + EFW + OAG + MPCC on a well tensioned focuser ? Weighs just under 1.3 KG. 

It has a 5kg capacity apparently so should be no problem at all.

Source: https://agenaastro.com/zwo-electronic-automatic-focuser-eaf-advanced.html

1 hour ago, gilesco said:

I was not trying to hijack the thread, but as I have no experience with DSS, I thought I would give my experience of how this is done with a different, but similar piece of software, from other posts, it appears the same nomenclature and processes apply, so it is still relevant.

No bother regarding hijacking. All relevant information for me so cheers 😊